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NakoL1 t1_ir2iznu wrote

a common approach nowadays is called "genome-wide associations"

if for a set of individuals you have both:

  • measurements for a trait of interest, and
  • genotypes at all genes in the genome,

then you can assess the correlation between the genetic variation and the trait variation. Typically, you might expect that most genes will have little to no correlation with your trait, but that one of a few genes will have strong correlations with that trait

that said, correlation isn't causality, so in principle you still have to figure out exactly what this or that gene does at the molecular level, what are the consequences of its interactions with other genes, and how this ultimately impacts the trait

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Adorable-Breakfast t1_ir3wdrm wrote

To add to that, it's been found that rather than depending strongly on a few genes, a lot of characteristics (e.g. personality traits, mental health conditions, etc.) depend weakly on many genes, as many as several thousand. Any single gene on its own may account for only a fraction of a percent of the total variance, which would've been undetectable until large enough data sets became available in recent years.

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